Nisshin Steel is pleased to announce that its Osaka Works (Works General Manager; Takashi Tanaka) and Ichikawa Works (Works General Manager; Susumu Yasuhara) have attained QS-9000 certification from JIC Quality Assurance, Ltd. QS-9000 is the U.S. automobile industry's uniform quality systems standard.
The Osaka and Ichikawa Works join Nisshin Steel's Kure, Sakai, and Toyo Works-which were certified in January 2001-thus completing QS-9000 certification for all of Nisshin Steel's standard and special steel and coated band steel production facilities.
QS-9000 is a set of quality standards derived from the quality systems demanded of automobile component and materials suppliers by the United States' Big Three automobile makers (GM, Ford, and Daimler-Chrysler) and five truck manufacturers. Based on the international ISO 9000 series' 1994 standards, QS-9000 includes additional demands from the U.S. auto industry as a whole as well as from individual manufacturers and is an extremely stringent set of standards. QS-9000 certification requires high-grade quality assurance measures and serves as an impartial testimony to a company's quality assurance efforts.
Nisshin Steel deemed QS-9000 certification essential to keep pace with the globalization of today's automobile industry as well as to fulfill its corporate slogan of "Nisshin: No. 1 in CS (customer satisfaction) and reliability in developmental ability and quality," and has been working dynamically to achieve certification since May 1995.
Seizing the opportunity presented by certification, the Osaka and Ichikawa Works have been working to upgrade their QS-9000 certification, and on April 26, 2001, the Osaka Works officially received certification from JIC Quality Assurance for the manufacture of cold strip, cold finished steel, and bainite, and the Ichikawa Works received certification for the manufacture of hot-dipped products for automobiles, coated products, and stainless steel foil products.
Nisshin Steel intends to leverage its QS-9000 certification to more efficiently manage its internal quality systems, continually make improvements to meet customer demands, and strive to achieve the number one rank in customer satisfaction.

(All of Nissan Steel's production facilities are ISO 9002 certified)